EX-RADICAL ADMITS PLANTING BOMB IN '70 AT UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON

Special to the New York Times

Published: May 2, 1987

SEATTLE, May 1—
Terrence Peter Jackson, a Vietnam-era antiwar protester formerly known as Silas Trim Bissell, pleaded guilty today to a Federal charge stemming from an attempt to blow up an Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps building in 1970.

Until his arrest in January, Mr. Jackson was said by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to be the last fugitive member of the radical Weatherman faction of Students for a Democratic Society.

A fugitive for 17 years, Mr. Jackson could be sentenced to a term up to 10 years and fined $10,000 for the charge to which he pleaded guilty, carrying an unregistered explosive device, in connection with planting the bomb at the R.O.T.C. building at the University of Washington.

However, Mr. Jackson and his attorney, Larry Finegold, both expressed hope that the plea bargain, under which a conspiracy charge was dropped in return for a guilty plea on the bomb count, would keep him out of jail. Mr. Jackson is to be sentenced June 19.

After entering the plea in Federal District Court, Mr. Jackson, 44 years old, told reporters he did not regret his antiwar activity but said he felt ''mistakes were made.'' He said, ''It was absolutely essential that the antiwar movement took place as it did.''

Mr. Jackson, who had his name legally changed to the one he has used since he and his wife, Judith Emily Bissell, fled while free on bail bail in 1970, said he ''would eventually have turned myself in.''

The couple had been arrested after planting a homemade bomb under the building at the University of Washington. Because of a faulty wire connection, the bomb did not go off.

After his guilty plea in Federal court, Mr. Jackson pleaded guilty to a state charge of assaulting a policeman at a 1969 antiwar demonstration. Prosecutors said they would recommend a 10-year suspended sentence in the case.

A member of the family that manufactures Bissell carpet sweepers, Mr. Jackson said he intended to return to Eugene, Ore., where he worked as a physical therapist in a hospital at the time he was arrested.